T'ruah

09/07/2026

Happy Labor Day! Today and every day, we are honoring workers in every industry and celebrating the achievements of the labor movement. We recommit to pursuing justice, dignity, and equity for all workers.

09/03/2026

"Moses could have handed the Torah to Joshua and called his work done," writes Rabbi Ryan Leszner about this week's parshiyot, Nitzavim-Vayeilech. "Instead, he makes sure it belongs to everyone who will need it, including those whose voices are too often left out of the room." Read the rest of this week's (M)oral Torah installment: https://buff.ly/w0FYNn8

Slichot begins this week, and Rosh Hashanah is just ahead. The Hebrew month of Elul reminds us to enter the Holy Days gently, walking toward them day by day, prayer by prayer, using the tools our tradition provides to do the spiritual work that leads to the Days of Awe. This summer I’ve been think...

09/02/2026

Twenty-year-old Pierre Damas Bel, an Ohio college student and Haitian immigrant who came to the U.S. to pursue his education, tragically took his own life after ICE officers put him in an ankle monitor. Barkuh dayan ha'emet. One death is the death of an entire world.
Previously, the U.S. government protected eligible foreign nationals from deportation and allowed them to work legally through the TPS (Temporary Protected Status) program. TPS for Haitians however has been terminated and the Trump Administration is now targeting Haitian communities--separating families, locking people into cruel detention centers, and deporting them to danger to Haiti. Before his death, Bel said on Instagram that he carried "a feeling of shame and humiliation" for being "treated like a criminal."
Call your Senators today and urge them to pass legislation restoring TPS for Haitians. This Amnesty International link will connect you directly to their offices and provides a script: https://buff.ly/IdwxgVJ

A 20-year-old Wright State student took his own life on Interstate 70 out of anguish over a required ICE ankle monitor, according to local community advocates.

09/01/2026

Unaccompanied children are being rounded up by ICE and need our protection. These are kids who arrive in the U.S. without a parent or legal guardian. They have often fled violence, persecution, trafficking, and abuse and came to the U.S. to seek safety. The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to deny tens of thousands of these children legal counsel so they can be quickly deported back to the very violence, trafficking, and danger they fled. Contact your members of Congress: https://buff.ly/fCQfqoN

08/31/2026

"If we want to fight antisemitism effectively – and not simply visibly – we need strategic imagination that much of the institutional Jewish community is sorely lacking," writes Rabbi Joshua Rabin of the Astoria Center of Israel in Queens in New York City and member of T'ruah's network. "That starts with relationships." Read the rest of his opinion piece on working with DSA elected officials.
https://buff.ly/P7RKbBg

I'm a Zionist rabbi in AOC's district. Here's what I've learned from the relationships I've built with the democratic socialists representing us.

08/30/2026

Throughout Elul, the month preceding Rosh Hashanah, it's customary to sound the shofar (ram's horn) each morning, except on Shabbat.

The shofar has deep meaning for us at T'ruah. In fact, our name means "shout," "blast," or "alarm" and refers to the nine broken, staccato blasts sounded on Rosh Hashanah.

Here's how T'ruah staff members respond when they hear the shofar.

08/27/2026

In Qusra, settlers and the Israeli military have been besieging Palestinian families for over two weeks — cutting off their water and electricity and trapping them inside their own homes. This is after months of settler attacks on the village.

The Israeli army could stop this violence if they wanted to. But they don't. It is part of a larger project of ethnic cleansing in the West Bank. And while these incidents used to be confined to Area C, increasingly they are expanding into Areas A and B.

As the situation drags on, Israeli officials are counting on international attention fading away. But we have to keep it up. We won't stop bearing witness.

08/27/2026

Cantor Sarah Bolts writes: "Rather than simply telling those in power to be fair, we need to look at who is being included and represented in leadership."

At the end of chapter 27 of Parshat Ki Tavo, we read about a strange ceremony. God tells Moses that half of the tribes stand on Mount Gerizim and proclaim blessings, while the other half stand on Mount Eval and proclaim curses. While the blessings are presented as a series of positive outcomes for f...

08/26/2026

Horrified by this attack on activists with Rabbis for Human Rights, Standing Together, and Bnei Avraham. Everyday, violence is being normalized in the West Bank. We cannot become immune.

08/25/2026

"Camila Toro de Paula, a 25-year-old transgender woman from Venezuela, has spent the past 11 months in a federal immigration detention center for men, where she said she has been assaulted, threatened and deprived of medical care."

Camila is one of dozens of transgender folks in ICE custody who are currently denied adequate healthcare, including access to life saving hormones, and are subjected to physical assault and harassment. This is a particularly discriminatory decision by the Department of Homeland Security to roll back the Obama-era protections of granted to transgender detainees.

"'The administration is creating a humanitarian disaster' by changing policies that were meant to protect transgender people, said Bridget Crawford, the legal director at Immigration Equality."

U.S. officials have sometimes eliminated access to gender-related treatment and dissolved measures meant to shield transgender detainees from harassment.